


How Did I Get Here, I Need to Know

by bar2d2s



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Just guys being dudes at the school dance, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 06:54:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21157448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bar2d2s/pseuds/bar2d2s
Summary: “Hey, why DON’T I go to homecoming in a dress?”When it comes to Richie, Eddie knows that there’s a fine line between a joke and a joke on HIM, but he’s still interested in seeing where his best friend is gonna take this weird idea.“Okay, do it.”





	How Did I Get Here, I Need to Know

It’s sophomore year. Eddie still hasn’t hit his growth spurt and is lingering around 5’. The bullies that rose up to replace the Bowers gang ask him if he’s gonna wear heels with his homecoming dress, so his date doesn’t have to stoop down so far.

Suddenly, trashmouth. 

“Nah, we thought it would be better if I wore the heels so I’d be even  _ taller _ than you no-necked shitheads.” Richie broke six feet that summer and he’s still pretty awkward and gangly, but hey, when you’re a head taller than the school bullies, they tend to back off. “You good, Eds?”

“Hell of a way to ask a guy to a dance, Tozier.” Eddie mutters, missing the way Richie’s face goes pale, then heats up again.

“What, you saying you didn’t get the roses? I’m gonna kill that florist.”

They’re gonna go stag, just like they have to every other dance, because no one wants to go out with the shortest and tallest boys in school. Richie snickers to himself. “What now?”

“Dude, what if I  _ did _ wear a dress and stuff? That would be hilarious!”

“My mom doesn’t have anything your size.” Eddie replies flatly, but Richie isn’t deterred.

“Come on, it would be great! We could probably find something at the thrift store, and my mom has big feet like me...” he trailed off, not wanting to seem overeager. “I think it would be fun.” Not funny, fun. That’s what sells the idea.

“So this  _ isn’t _ gonna be a big joke at my expense?” Eddie asked warily.

“Nope!” Richie replied cheerily, “Just a ploy to get you the hottest date in school.”

They hit the thrift store together, and Richie is thrilled to find a pair of ugly black heels in his size (size eleven, Eddie thinks mournfully, staring down at his own size six feet and wondering if the universe will ever let him grow up), as well as a long black prom dress that was probably fashionable back in the mid-70s. There’s a puffy underskirt beneath the soft material of the actual dress, and they laugh themselves stupid while Richie tries it on. As a capper, and in memory of Bev, Richie ducks into the pharmacy and steals a tube of dark red lipstick, figuring he can borrow his mom’s eyeliner and other stuff later.

They agree to meet up in front of the gym before the dance started, so they could make a grand entrance. Eddie is still giggling as he waves Richie away.

He’s laughing less when they actually get there.

His mother had made him wear his Sunday suit, even though he’d just been planning on wearing a nice shirt and pants. She’d also tried to insist on driving him, but Eddie had put his foot down and promised to be careful on his bike. So there he stood by the gym doors, waiting for Richie to show up, when this beautiful girl in a slick black dress walks up instead.

Richie had pulled out some of the underskirt, so it didn’t puff out so much as flow to accentuate hips he didn’t have. His makeup wasn’t as sloppy as Eddie had thought it might be, mainly because he’d practiced a few times before game day, to make sure he got it right. He looked nervous, but still confident somehow and when Richie asked if Eddie wanted to go inside, he’d automatically offered the other boy his arm.

Aside from the initial uproarious laughter they got when people noticed that Eddie’s ‘date’ was that trashmouth Richie Tozier, no one actually seemed to care that a boy in a dress that stood three heads taller than most everyone else in the class was in their midst.

Richie was having a grand old time, talking to kids he knew from other classes and making jokes about stuffing his bra, though from the look of the flat top of the dress, it was unlikely he was actually wearing one. Eddie was quieter, if only because this joke was starting to feel like less of a joke and more of a prank, one that had him as the patsy. Richie ran back to him as fast as he could in those stupid heels, face flushed and giddy.

“Did I deliver or what?” He crowed, still  _ Richie _ under all that hairspray and war paint, and Eddie wanted to die.

“I know you were laughing at me over there.” He muttered, arms crossed over his chest. “This is fucked up, you said I wasn’t gonna be the butt of the joke this time.” Richie wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and while Eddie should have been surprised that he’d painted his nails, he really wasn’t.

“Eddie you loser, I’m in a fucking dress in the same gym where last week, I fell off the climbing rope and Coach Tyler said that no matter how tall I got, I’d always be a girly boy. I just spent five minutes making bra jokes at Allison Draper and Candy Sheffield. And they’re all just...rolling with it, sitting there in their own discomfort.” Richie turned him so that he was facing the rest of the gym, other arm outstretched towards their classmates. “If anyone’s the joke here tonight, it’s all of them. Now c’mon, I can probably fit another dozen cookies in this bra before I start looking like a lopsided Cindy Crawford, vamanos!”

So they snuck napkins full of butter cookies out in Richie’s mom’s bra, drank a little too much of what turned out to be spiked punch, and danced to some NKOTB song that Ben would have lost it to hear bouncing all over the gym.

It was around the time that they were slow dancing, Richie’s chin resting on the top of his head, his own face pressed close to Richie’s hairy armpit, that Eddie wondered why they hadn’t just done this for all the other dances.

Years later in a Chinese restaurant, Eddie would ask, “You remember homecoming, back in tenth grade?” And Richie would cheerfully answer, 

“Nope!”

And it felt like a tiny, secret part of him had withered and died, but he had no idea why.


End file.
